Mr. David Fitzsimons:

To take the latter point first, I disagree with rates based on profit. There would be an inherent motivation to not be the best. It would be rewarding the unprofitable. In retail, the most progressive, forward thinking retailers are commonly the most profitable. Indeed, last Saturday evening, we, along with the President of Ireland, interviewed the winner of the store of the year, who has hired many people over recent years despite the recession. He is a good retailer. I do not wish that guy to be incentivised with lower rates if he becomes unprofitable. The fundamental issue with rates, regardless of how they are structured, is that we get service. One pays a service charge in shopping centres. There are weekly and monthly service charge meetings, accounts are put up on the board, everybody has their say and they decide what the shopping centre will do. They spend the money and do it transparently. Currently, we have these beautiful big glass boxes called local authority buildings sitting in county towns, but there is very little transparency. There is a parade to announce the fact that the path was slightly improved or a bit of damage was rectified, but they are not dealing with vacancy, dereliction, street lighting or crime. Next week, the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, the Garda Síochána, our organisation, Chambers Ireland and the County and City Managers' Association are coming together to devise a way forward for our town centres. Hopefully, through that type of national representation we will motivate stakeholders locally to engage with their local authority and put some plans together to re-engage with customers. Regardless of who pays the rates, if the rates are wasted we are fooling ourselves and wasting time.